Korea Railroad Museum

So over 4 months after I visited my last rail museum in Hong Kong, way back at the start of October, I have finally found another one to visit in Seoul! Its about 30km south of Seoul centre, but a few stops on the subway north of the old capital and fortress site at Suwon, so could be combined into a long tour. Its 2,000won to get in for grown ups, which I apparently am, which is about $2.

Trains!

And it’s quite a good one. The outside section has a wide selection of different locomotives, ranging from steam, to diesel and electric. Some of the designs are quite fun as they clearly show a departure from the ones I have been used to seeing in Europe and the ex-USSR. There are also a number of carriages, some of which are historically important – being used either by ex presidents of by MacArthur during the Korea War. And a steam crane. I’ve decided I really quite like steam cranes…

Steam engines from Japanese colonial era

Alas you cannot climb all over these trains…

Several historic carriages abound but you can only peer through the (dirty) windows…

This was interesting – carriage used for heating trains

Inside the heater carriage

These look very cool…

Quite airplane like really

Have I mentioned steam cranes are awesome?

The outside area is quite large

Some sort of ballast thing I think…

You can look for passing mainline trains too if that’s what you are into….

Inside there are a number of exhibits, many of which are definitely in the range of “stuff that Korean Railways found down the back of the sofa and couldn’t think of anything better to display…” but amongst the junk there were some interesting bits. The signal section allowed you to click buttons showing the various approach aspects and they had a miniature level crossing with warning lights and siren that you could lower or raise. Also whilst not exactly gripping stuff, a selection of gold railway spikes and ties used in various ceremonies for opening railways, together with scissors used for cutting ribbons was at least different to the normal stuff you sometimes get!

Playing at being a crossing keeper is quite fun. Nice and loud anyway!

Scissors!

Ceremonial things

Finally, because I’m very childish, here is some unfortunately pruned wildlife on display amongst the railway vehicles…